The health authorities have warned about the potential spread of omicron sub-variant in the country, which could be more infectious.
Prof Nazmul Islam, one of the spokespersons of the health authorities, was speaking on the issue at the regular briefing on Wednesday.
Prof Nazmul, who is also director (disease control) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said that the sub-variant of Omicron came from Southern Africa and had been identified in as many as 57 countries in the world.
He spoke within a day of the World Health Organization (WHO) warning of a newly emerging variant of Omicron, BA2.
“This could be more infectious than other omicron sub-variants. This variant could break the health system if it starts spreading across the country,” he added.
“There is no scope to be complacent. We have to be responsible and everyone must maintain health guidelines to ensure that cases do not rise further,” he said.
Nazmul added that efforts were underway to find out how many of those who died of covid were actually vaccinated.
The DGHS has provided a handful of information about the possible extension of Omicron in the country. The global data platform GISAID has said that there are 69 cases of Omicron.
According to outbreak.info three Omicron sub-variants – BA.1(43 cases), BA.1.1 (20 cases) and BA.2 (six cases) -- have been detected in Bangladesh. The data was updated on January 24.
After that no new data was added to GISAID and in outbreak.info.
Global media have reported, citing Danish health officials, that BA.2 is estimated to be 1.5 times more transmissible than BA.1. The estimate was made based on preliminary data, although it also suggested that the variant did not cause more severe disease.
It also did not provide any indication that it is evading the protection offered by vaccines.
Denmark is the first country where the BA.2 variant became the dominating variant in any country for the first time.
The Guardian newspaper has reported that In England, a preliminary analysis of contact tracing from December 27 through to January 11 by the UK Health Security Agency suggests that household transmission is higher among people infected with BA.2 (13.4%) compared with other Omicron cases (10.3%).
The variant has already been named as Stealth Omicron as it can deceive the kind of rt-PCR tests that hint at possible omicron cases.
International journals and medical data research websites are suggesting that Omicron is prominent in Denmark, the United Kingdom, India, Botswana, New Zealand, and South Africa.
